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Last January 29, upwards of 600 New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities and community mental health professionals assembled in Albany, determined to use their growing involvement in New York's political process to press state leaders for a package of seven priorities that included:

Medicaid Buy-In
Cost of Living and Medicaid Fee Hike
Restoration of the Community Reinvestment Act
Adult Home Reform
Electroshock Rights and Protections Legislation
Mental Health Insurance Parity
Legislation to Stop the Inhumane Solitary Prison Confinement for Inmates with Psychiatric Disabilities

State approval of the Medicaid Buy-In occurred even before NYAPRS members got to town. The Buy-In was attached to the major healthcare agreement that preceded the beginning of state budget discussions, a deal fashioned to provide hospital and nursing home workers with a multi-year pay hike package. NYAPRS members had led the way in the fight for the Buy-In, working closely with colleague groups in the state's disability advocacy community to lead a fervent series of demonstrations, media work and call-in campaigns that even included having several of our staff arrested outside the Governor's office.

A second victory occurred early last May when we learned that community mental health agencies were one of the few groups tapped by legislative leaders and the Governor to join the hospital and nursing home groups in receiving new funding to provide pay increases for their hard-pressed dedicated workforce. The increases will apparently come in the form of a 3% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for those agencies funded by state grants, and a 10% fee hike for those agencies funded by Medicaid.

We secured an additional victory when both houses of the New York State Legislature approved the restoration and a new version of the landmark Community Reinvestment program, which will restore hopes for additional funding relief in the coming years. Any state hospital beds or facilities that close over the next four years will pump new monies into meeting our community's most urgent service needs, whether it be more salary increases or new service development.

This year, NYAPRS members also joined the campaign for adult home reform, highlighting the terrible plight of almost 15,000 New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities who reside in deplorable conditions in deficient homes. Led by Co-President Jody Silver and Public Policy Co-Chair Ray Schwartz, our members have vigorously worked alongside our colleagues from SCAA, NAMI and other groups to help publicize this scandal and draft corrective policy papers. The advocates' efforts were well rewarded; when the Governor proposed a host of new measures a half hour before our news conference, and the Assembly promptly announced that there would be public hearings on this issue.

Among the measures put forth by the Administration are the establishment of a special state workgroup to address this scandal that will bring adult home resident advocates to the table with the heads of all the relevant state agencies, new funding for in-home advocacy, legal rights and peer bridger services and for more state investigators, a complete cut off of referrals to deficient homes, higher fines, public posting of home deficiencies and a number of other remedies still under discussion.

NYAPRS led other mental health groups to join with an impressive array of legal rights, prisoner's rights and related groups to push for new legislation that would stop the inhumane solitary confinement of state prison inmates with psychiatric disabilities.

The groups are hoping to win passage of state legislation next year to require alternative treatment for inmates with psychiatric disabilities who are experiencing difficulties.

Legal groups have mounted a sweeping lawsuit against the state of New York, demanding that prisoners with psychiatric disabilities receive just and proper treatment and do no live in the hole for 23 hours a day because there is no understanding for their condition.

While advocates here in NYS continue to struggle to get three-way support for legislation to overcome insurance discrimination that has unfairly and unjustly placed narrow limits on mental health care, President Bush recently gave his powerful support to national legislation that could bring mental health parity at long last to New York State.

Finally, we worked hard for passage of several new bills increasing the rights and protections of those New Yorkers who are considering or being considered for electroshock treatment. NYAPRS members, led by Public Policy Committee Co-Chair Susan Perr have strongly supported the Assembly's newly revised package of four bills boosting informed consent and requiring greater state oversight over the procedure and the equipment. We have also strongly advocated with the Senate.

The Assembly passed all four of these bills but the Senate apparently will not act on any of them this year and will require considerable advocacy over the summer and into next year's session. But we will not give up. We will work all summer to educate, inform and press for proper rights protections, like informed consent and more active state oversight over the use of this controversial treatment.

Mental health groups are being recognized as one of the few big winners this year in Albany: we should feel very good about our growing success. And our brightest future lies in our ability to achieve the successful mobilization of tens of thousands of New York voters into a unified and powerful disability voter block that could play a strong and lasting role in shaping New York policy every year. But for now, we can stop and take a deep breath and feel good about… who's getting powerful now!